Scientists Sequence Genome of Unique Flowering Plant Amborella trichopodaI started a thread on human genetics in the Technology and Gadgets thread and this one here is on plant genetics. Recent discoveries in the field of genetics are fascinating and I'm expecting that there will be a huge number of more and more monumental discoveries made this next year and in years to come!

Dr Albert and his colleagues said the genome of Amborella – a small understory tree or shrub endemic to the main island, Grande Terre, of New Caledonia in the South Pacific – provides conclusive evidence that the ancestor of all flowering plants, including Amborella, evolved following a ‘genome doubling event’ that occurred about 200 million years ago.

Genomes Gone WildWeird and wonderful, plant DNA is challenging preconceptions about the evolution of life, including our own species.Great topic! Maybe we can all learn something for a change instead of just swapping gossip!Some plants have genomes FIFTY times larger than the human genome. What's with all that extra genetic information? Is it just junk DNA or is there more to this anomaly? Inquiring minds want to know!

An increase in genome size is typically a consequence of one of two mechanisms: the duplication of the entire genome, or the multiplication of transposable elements (TEs) within a genome. The former is common in plants and results in polyploidy, a state in which an organism harbors multiple copies of a genome. But the latter is a far more common cause of size increase in animal genomes. The human genome, for example, is swollen with more than 1 million copies of a single, typically nonfunctional TE called ALU.

Stranger than FictionPlant biology: You can't make this stuff up.Okay, I'm in on this topic! Best topic for a long time! There's a lot more going on with plants than most people realize. They are complex organisms and there's a lot about them that we don't yet understand!

The 2009 sci-fi movie Avatar even comes with its own guide to the exotic flora of the moon Pandora, where plants communicate with each other via “signal transduction from root to root.” The panoply of fictional plants offers a large and varied dose of the weird and wonderful. But there’s no need to resort to fiction to find truly unusual plant characteristics.

Pretty soon they'll have plant genetics kits just like they used to have chemistry sets when we were kids and parents will give their kids plant genetics kits for xmas. The little kids will then be able to custom design unique plants that have never existed before and grow them in little hot houses so they can observe how well they designed their little green creations. They only thing that'll limit them will be their imaginations!

I found an interesting site called dnabarcoding101.org that's all about using what they call DNA barcodes to identify and classify living things. One way it can be used is to help you figure out the identity of a plant that you don't recognize. It might get a little expensive since you'd have to pay a lab to process your plant sample, but once processed you can use a section of the plant's DNA to look up the identy of the plant in an online database. It takes all the guess work out of just going by appearance since often different plants can share similar traits. There's no doubt with DNA!

wildrose: Thanks for sharing! That website is really interesting! It would be great to be able to identify any plant simply by testing a small sample of the plant. I know it's a ways off before we have a sensor and app like that for our smartphones, but it's a great idea and I can see how it could work.

EVOLUTION OF FLOWER COLOR IN THE DESERT ANNUAL LINANTHUS PARRYAEWhen I came across a field of Sandblossom on Sunday near Indian Joe Canyon I was impressed, but it wasn't until today that I realized the scientific significance of this attractive flower!

Linanthus parryae, a diminutive desert annual with white or blue flowers, has been the focus of a long-standing debate among evolutionary biologists. At issue is whether the flower color polymorphism in this species is the product of random genetic drift, as Sewall Wright argued, or of natural selection, as proposed by Carl Epling and his colleagues. Our long-term studies of three polymorphic populations in the Mojave Desert demonstrate that flower color is subject to selection that varies in both time and space in its direction and magnitude.

blackturtle: Fascinating post! That last article is the most readable. It provides a good overview, but including the actual research papers was a good idea for people who want to delve a little more deeply into the topic. It's amazing how a cute little flower can have such an interesting story to tell!

Flower Color Changed Using Gene-Editing Technology in World FirstThis could also have been posted under the CRISPR thread, but it works quite nicely here as well. Fun stuff, this gene-editing technology. Biohacking for the win!

mrgreen: Kind of a boring application of this technology, but I'm sure this is just an early indicationn of what can be accomplished using CRISPR technology. We can probably look forward to experiments which yield more exotic colors for flowers and who knows what creative scientists might come up with next? Let's hope that they don't get too creative!